New Mental Health Mandate Will Make Obamacare More Expensive, Increase Fraud And Canceled Policies

(FORBES) Even as stories pour in of Americans facing steeply higher health insurance premiums and canceled coverage, TeamTISI +0.13% Obama just imposed new regulations that will make those problems worse. It’s almost like they can’t help themselves.

A “mental health parity” mandate was passed by Congress in 2008, but Obama officials claim health insurers aren’t fully complying. (You’ll just have to overlook the irony of the Obama administration, which has postponed several provisions of Obamacare without any legal authority to do so, complaining that others aren’t complying with some law.)

The more likely explanation is the administration is desperately trying to redirect peoples’ attention from the Obamacare rollout that has become a non-stop string of stories about failed websites, higher premiums and canceled policies.

President Obama’s latest effort to divert public attention ignores a fundamental problem: it’s much easier to know when a broken bone has healed than a broken mind. That ambiguity opens the door to overtreatment and fraud.